ScottishPower to construct £150m inexperienced hydrogen plant at Port of Felixstowe

ScottishPower is planning to construct a £150m inexperienced hydrogen plant on the Port of Felixstowe to energy trains, vans and ships, the Guardian can reveal.

The vitality firm has drawn up proposals for a 100megawatt plant on the Suffolk port which can present sufficient gasoline to energy 1300 hydrogen vans from 2026.

The corporate, owned by €63bn Spanish utilities large Iberdrola, stated demand for the inexperienced gasoline had stepped up since petrol and diesel costs started to soar final 12 months, emboldening the agency to speculate.

It has submitted an software to the federal government’s Internet Zero Hydrogen Fund, which supplies state backing to develop low-carbon hydrogen initiatives for the following three years. ScottishPower estimated the entire challenge might value between £100m and £150m.

ScottishPower plans to construct the power, which might be across the measurement of a soccer pitch, on brownfield land inside the port, which is likely one of the busiest within the UK and a commerce hub.

Inexperienced hydrogen is produced by utilizing renewable electrical energy to drive an electrolyser that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. The fuel is burned to supply energy, emitting solely water vapour and heat air, and no carbon greenhouse gases.

ScottishPower plans to produce hydrogen to the automobiles and equipment utilized by the Port of Felixstowe, which is owned by Hutchison Ports, a part of Hong Kong based mostly multinational CK Hutchison.

About 6,000 heavy items automobiles a 12 months use the port and logistics suppliers are more and more finding out hydrogen as an choice to chop gasoline payments and carbon emissions. The hydrogen will even be used to energy trains used for rail freight into the port and delivery vessels.

ScottishPower, headquartered in Glasgow, already has vital pursuits in East Anglia, the place it has offshore windfarms. Iberdrola owns Europe’s largest manufacturing web site for inexperienced hydrogen for industrial use, at Puertollano in Spain.

Barry Carruthers, the hydrogen director at ScottishPower, informed the Guardian: “The energy of demand from the port itself, logistics and distribution firms and rail freight firms has given use the arrogance to press forward with this facility. This can be a massive, industrial scale challenge that we’re doing at tempo.

“The price of hydrogen is now comparable with diesel so this may be cheaper and cleaner for patrons. The market has given us a extremely good glide path.”

ScottishPower is already within the strategy of growing a smaller hydrogen facility at Whitelee, the UK’s largest onshore windfarm close to Glasgow, in partnership with Sheffield’s ITM Energy. The 20MW electrolyser, which is because of produce hydrogen by subsequent 12 months, is predicted to make as much as 8 tonnes of inexperienced hydrogen a day, roughly equal to fuelling 550 buses to journey from Glasgow to Edinburgh and again once more every day.

Carruthers stated the Felixstowe web site would additionally provide the chance to supply “inexperienced ammonia” from inexperienced hydrogen, which may then be utilized in agricultural fertiliser.

Additional up the Suffolk coast, environmental campaigners have protested in opposition to proposals for the £20bn Sizewell C nuclear energy station.

However Carruthers stated the proposed hydrogen plant “won’t dominate the skyline” and is prone to be constructed inside the grounds of the port. “For locals it ought to imply much less diesel air pollution and cleaner energy for the trains and lorries within the space,” he stated.

Final week it was introduced that dockers at Felixstowe belonging to the Unite union are planning eight days of strike motion over pay which are anticipated to trigger critical disruption to the UK’s largest container port.